Hello and welcome to the You, Me and Baby blog. I will be blogging about all things pregnancy and birth related. Please feel free to suggest topics you’d like to read about.To start off with though, I’d just like to explain what made me start You, Me and Baby.

I used hypnobirthing during the birth of my first child in 2013. Before I started the sessions, I was extremely anxious about giving birth, I’d heard all sorts of horror stories and seen all the TV shows which don’t often show birth in a very good light. People kept asking me how I felt and I would say I was scared and frightened.

An avid googler, I decided to start researching my options and stumbled across hypnobirthing and in particular Natal Hypnotherapy. I read up on it and decided this was the way forward. I spoke to a friend who knew someone who’d used hypnobirthing and it had helped them a lot so I started to persuade my husband. We discussed it a few times and he agreed we should give it a go.Unfortunately I couldn’t find a local Natal Hypnotherapy practitioner so we used a different method.

My husband was very sceptical at first and thought it would be a load of mumbo jumbo. But in our first session there was a lot of science and research and my husband realised that this was actually going to be really useful. We both found it difficult to relax during our first session but gradually this became easier and easier.

After we’d finished our course, I continued to listen to positive affirmations and visualisations most nights and it really helped with my sleep.I was now really looking forward to meeting my baby and couldn’t wait to give birth - what a turn around!

The reason I have decided to teach Natal Hypnotherapy is largely because of the techniques it teaches the birth partner. During my birth, there were a few times where I lost my focus and struggled to get back to my calm and relaxed state. My husband hadn’t really been taught many techniques to help me, and the ones he had learnt were confusing for him. The Natal Hypnotherapy workshops really focus on the things the birth partner can do to help, and they are not complicated to remember. They are even given a little wallet sized card to keep with them to give them reminders if they need them.

Natal Hypnotherapy workshops also explain all about the emotional map of labour which no other hypnobirthing or antenatal course teaches and would have really helped us to understand certain parts of my labour.

What finally gave me the push to train as a practitioner was talking to a lot of the mums I’d met through my first baby. Some of them had such bad birth experiences with their first babies that they were too scared to get pregnant again. This isn’t right and I really want to teach women and their birth partners all the amazing tools and techniques to help them achieve a positive birth experience. Birth shouldn’t be something to be scared of, it is a beautiful natural process. So if you, or anyone you know, are pregnant and have fears or anxieties please contact me.